


i'm not fortunes fool, i'm yours

by thunderousbreak



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky is concerned, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Steve is reckless, together they make a formidable duo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:49:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24049981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thunderousbreak/pseuds/thunderousbreak
Summary: “Only? The ‘only’ option?” Bucky hissed, “there was nothing here for you to lose, there could have been no greater gain than your safety. You fought an unnecessary war and it gave you nothing but pain.”Steve smiled, almost sadly. “Nothing?” He peered deeply into Bucky’s eyes, past his reflection and the torment. “It gave me you.”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 1
Kudos: 36





	i'm not fortunes fool, i'm yours

**Author's Note:**

> i saw a couple of hannibal gifsets some months ago and suddenly this happened. some dialogue (and the title) has been taken directly from the show but contextually they may differ from the original because i've never seen it? i don't know what it's about. 
> 
> dude i'm just clearing my laptop. i hope you like it.

At first, there was nothing. Breeze vacated the room, the light dangling above them degenerated. Bucky Barnes' feet scattered the floor in a way his mind fled from thought to thought. Everything besides the two of them left.

The redundant house was never a replica of home. Home, for all it was with its soft caress and jubilant grace, was a lie. It could never exist, was impermanent, and condemned to the fickle interest of the soul which brought it to life. Yet here stood Bucky in Steve’s home, with sickly strands of damp hair and a frenzy that varnished him into captivity.

Quietly, for words held life in the essence of every letter and it was too soon to utter his, Steve watched him. Peered through tired, hooded lids so he could embrace the sight of Bucky and Bucky alone. For once his home could not compete with the grandeur of a guest, for once it came second.

He looked beautiful. Face porcelain and lips gushing red from the coldness that nibbled on the skin. Under his eyes hung heavy bags that spoke stories of sleeplessness, souls engulfed in the sacks he carried, violence emerging from the troubled victims and demanding release from the veins of a body too weak to sustain a breath.

Steve wasn’t sure how it was possible, but to see the humanity on Bucky’s body and in the DNA that blueprinted his misery, he found him ethereal. The resin that Hydra doused his supple body within broke, cracked, fractured. Like a bone struck by a calamity that liberated it rather than trapped. It was from those cracks that emerged Bucky Barnes, and it was from that shell that he tore apart to become anew. 

Motivated by his deliration, Bucky weaved through Steve’s home like a stitch puncturing the skin to conjoin a seceded wound, before stopping in front of the devastated living room, breath laboured but controlled. He wore a simple fit, civilian clothes that eliminated the story of horror which tormented his shadow, and despite the wrongness and inexplicable rightness of it all, he was majestic as an angel.

The house had been annihilated by the previous guests, their bodies now hanging in the closet as help was destined to arrive in the near future. But their catastrophic stay had ruined the home and ruptured the sublime fantasy Steve had created, reducing the beauty to debris of an untold fable.

Gun sliding into its pouch and stance elevating from stealth to calm, Bucky investigated the dismay whilst Steve observed him. Maybe he’d see the evil that Steve was or perhaps would understand the provocative calls of chaos which could never be ignored. Whatever the verdict, Steve’s only wish was for salvation.

As Bucky's keen eyes surveyed the room, Steve released himself from the corner and stepped silently into the light, the glow emanating piercing judgement. His shoes felt heavy on his feet, thunderous and tiring, and they slammed against the floorboards with agony in every sound.

“You were supposed to leave,” Bucky whispered, voice troubled with pain.

Shaking with an emotion Steve couldn’t quite place, Bucky was slow to turn. As patient as his former self that yearned for this moment, Steve waited for their eyes to meet. When they met, he saw grief and torment staring back at him.

“I couldn't leave without you,” he announced, his face barely moving save his lips. 

His nose stung, the scent of his blood surging into his system again, but he ignored it as well as he ignored the throbbing which had consumed his entire body. Bucky looked uncomfortable by it all.

His lips fell apart, disbelief painting his face as the wild tremors plaguing his person subdued. He had admitted it, the parched love he sustained for Bucky, quenched at his exhausting expression. Sucking in the corner of his lips, biting the flesh he caught with his teeth and feeling the hook lay in the tip of his mouth, Steve breathed.

Gazing at Bucky’s lips, his accentuated jawline, and the hair that decorated it, a complex collection of religious brushstrokes, he eventually willed himself to meet Bucky’s eyes again. Raising his calloused hand and forcing an empty and unforgiving smile, he touched Bucky’s head, stroking the wet hair and gently squeezing him to promise that he was there.

Destroyed by the display, the confession, or perhaps Steve’s inability to be the composed man Bucky knew him to be, Bucky was frozen to his shock, just barely inclining to Steve’s grip as he massaged the side of his head so routinely it was as though he conducted such affection daily. But he didn’t, he never had. After this moment, he feared he would never again.

“You love me,” Bucky breathed, eyes locating the answer in Steve’s brokenness. 

There had not been a moment in all the time they had known each other, where Steve was not impressed or completely absorbed by the man whose head was in his palm. Bucky’s mind, troubled or not, had ensnared Steve into a tender web composed of the smoothest silk and decorated with a plethora of memories, happy and dismayed.

To know someone so perfectly human and adamant in survival, was refreshing. Eventually everyone fell victim to themselves and the circumstances induced by fate, but to rise and conquer the self that was once lost in the rubble earned the respect that the world would have to forge to find. Steve would make sure of it.

“It's true,” he replied. “I do.”

Bucky’s next breaths were pushed out of his lungs, his body convulsing as his lungs defied him. “I told you to leave,” he choked, “you’re covered in blood, you have dead men in your closet. You didn’t leave.”

“I couldn't. I’ve spent my whole life losing you only to gain you for a mere second before you disappear again. I paid my dues, I earned this one moment with you, I know I have.”

Anguish pooled out of Bucky, Steve’s words though truthful, still poisonous. In the fragmented room of Steve's house, the smallest things appeared to have the greatest impact. 

He was covered in blood, that statement correct as the existence of the unyielding moon. Some were his, the stab wound in his shoulder, the scrapes of a teasing knife against his abdomen, cuts, and bruises from falling onto glass and splintered wood. But others came mostly from his enemy’s, soaking the white dress shirt and bathing it in blush.

Despite the composure he showed and the calmness instilled into every limb in his body, eliminating minuscule movement that couldn’t be detected by anyone, he was as disheveled as Bucky looked. Hair unruly, skin drugged with tire, eyes gleaming from exertion. Though his heart was slow, his mind was not, and in that moment he was sure how he could slow down the unstoppable beast that was himself.

“It would've been okay, it would have been fine. I could have found you again and we could have sorted this, whatever this is, out. But look at you. God, just look. You’re still bleeding Steve, you’re still fighting,” Bucky said in a low, intensely frustrated and terrified voice.

“The easiest wounds to heal are those that can be seen. Hell, I’m healing as we speak. But it’s been too long Buck, far too long for me to run now. This was the only option I could ever consider to take.” 

“Only? The ‘only’ option?” Bucky hissed, “there was nothing here for you to lose, there could have been no greater gain than your safety. You fought an unnecessary war and it gave you nothing but pain.”

Steve smiled, almost sadly. “Nothing?” He peered deeply into Bucky’s eyes, past his reflection and the torment. “It gave me you.”

All the injuries that ruined his skin with hurt were a small price to pay when the reward was Bucky. Nothing could ever compare the relief he bought with a single glance, how Steve's hunger depleted upon seeing him. 

It was not possible for him to be nothing when he was Steve's universe. A precious melody, a soothing hug, a heavenly expanse. 

Eyes watering, iris drowning in the despair that lingered there, Bucky shook his head, lips disappearing into the crevice of his mouth. It was disarming to be loved so intensely, Steve knew. To have someone’s faith devoted to you, their eyes fixated on yours; terrifying. But he was an open book, his pages littered with Bucky and Bucky alone. 

“It shouldn’t have come to this,” he uttered, shattered, and confounded. The madness cocooning him in a silk blanket amplified, and shaking his head, tears plummeting to the ground, he continued, “it shouldn't have come to this, you shouldn’t have done this. I told you to leave, you were supposed to leave, why didn’t you listen?” 

Bucky shook in Steve's grasp, earthquakes rocketing through his weakened body. His stubble scratched Steve's arm gently, prickling the sensitive skin and he thought this is him. This is Bucky Barnes in action, to the core. Pushing aside his tightness in his throat, swallowing despite the stiffness that resided there, he pulled Bucky in.

Reeled the fisherman into his grasp and felt him combust, disassembled jigsaw pieces collapsing in his arms. Bucky shook, trembled and quivered, breaths too fast and words too thick to spit. Throwing an arm over his shoulder and moving his hand further onto Bucky’s head, digging his fingers into his hair and feeling the hair shift under his skin, he burrowed his face into his neck.

Gazing unseeingly at the mess behind Bucky, he clenched his hair in a tender fist and allowed him to move onto Steve’s shoulder, oozing uncontrollable adrenaline. His heartbeat was erratic and he was honest to god panting onto Steve, reacting as though he had voyaged through hell to get into Steve's embrace.

Well, he had. They both did. Achilles and Patroclus, destroying the Greeks to conquer Troy by themselves. There was no divine intervention that was capable of taking them down when they were together; they were beloveds.

“Maybe it’s love, maybe it’s madness, or maybe it’s foolishness. But I couldn’t leave and given the opportunity to do this all again, I would still never leave. We all have our weaknesses Buck, a century later and you’re still mine.”

There was an urgency in his cells that he hadn’t known existed, a desperation now that Bucky was in his embrace. Trying to hold as much as he could, needing Bucky how the earth needs the sun, he let himself get lost in the hug. He had earned it, he paid the price, he deserved it.

“Why can’t you see yourself, Steve, why?” demanded Bucky, scrambling to reach more of Steve. “You almost died. You could have died because you didn’t listen to me, you never do, and what would that have done? Would love be worth it then?”

Harshly pulling back, a severed limb in the open, Bucky searched him. Tried to acquire an answer but all he would ever find was Steve's unwavering loyalty to him.

Stroking Bucky’s cheek with his thumb, he replied, “I'd die a thousand times for one chance to see you.”

Frowning as though the answer physically pained him, Bucky dug into Steve's body, hitting his wounds and knocking the breath out of him. Fisting the red front of his shirt, he sobbed.

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” he said, words breaking as they were spoken.

Resting his head on Bucky’s, closing his eyes finally, and loosening his body against his, Steve said, “I know you do. It’s okay.”

“No it’s not. It’s not okay and with you bleeding out it never will be because you’ll- you’re-“

Carefully, Steve palmed Bucky’s back and instructed, “breathe.”

Bucky let out a cheerless chuckle. “Funny you should say that to me when it should be me saying it to you.”

“Why? This is it for me, this is my paradise.”

If there was a heaven on earth, a garden so lovely and beautiful it could not be conceived by human imagination, then this was it. This was it. This was it. 

“Death, destruction, despair?”

Shaking his head and forcing the stiffness out of his neck, Steve whispered, “you.”

“You’re a lovesick fool, Rogers.”

“I'm yours.” 

Bucky released a disturbed sigh that painted Steve's skin in goosebumps. He wasn't used to this, Steve openly distributing his thoughts and emotions like they meant nothing to him. But after years of fighting, repressing and hiding, he learned that the only way to keep himself hidden was by giving something in return. Transparency in return for secrecy. 

Bucky would only ever know what Steve wished for him too, Natasha and Sam just as unfortunate. But lucky for him, Steve wanted him to know everything, understand that the man he was and not the man he remembered. They had all changed, echoes of their past self. 

“Let me clean you up and after that, we’re getting the fuck out of here. We’re going to have a new life. A new beginning. A new everything. Nobody would know about it. It would be ours alone,” Bucky planned, mumbling almost to himself it was that quiet and frantic.

“A rebirth,” summed Steve and Bucky pulled back far enough to meet his gaze.

“Yeah. A phoenix rising from its ashes one last time.”

Even though it didn’t need to be said, Steve still divulged, “I’d follow you to the end of the line, if you’d let me.”

Sighing, Bucky nodded. “I know you would, Steve.” Then, crestfallen, “that’s what worries me the most.”

Being the receiver of unrestrained devotion was supposed to be a privilege, a fix for a lover who craved affection. But for people like them, who worked like ghosts and were as permeable as thin smells, it was a burden. To know that someone regarded you highly and desired you as home, their home, was a lethargic curse.

It was intoxicating at first but then slowly, as the responsibilities mounted and the truth of being committed to another came forth, being careful and understanding in war took its toll. Many survived, but those who didn’t have a plate to shoulder the stipulations, they fell.

“Let’s just get you cleaned up, okay? Let's just get out of here.”

Bucky took his hand, locking their fingers into a tender hug and then urged him to follow. Steve’s only option was to be compliant. Staggering on his malleable legs, they walked over the mess that had amassed all over the house, the home now a battlefield and Steve the lone surviving warrior. 

Defying all odds, Bucky pushed and pulled, refusing to let their fingers fall apart like their bodies had when Bucky fell from the train in the alps. They were connected in a union more sacred than marriage, a union that poets wrote in reminiscence, unbelievable and yet as real as blossoming in the spring. 

The sofa was tossed to the side, Steve vaguely recalled throwing it on someone to defend his boneless body from an armada of bullets. Using one hand, Bucky restored it onto its feet and gently ushered Steve to sit on the cushion, his body collapsing onto the battered surface, his life safe in such a precious hold.

“Does it hurt?” Bucky asked, dropping onto a knee and shrugging his backpack onto the floor, accumulating ingredients to cook Steve back to health. 

Smiling ambiguously, Steve found his lips reply in their own accord. “Unforgivingly.” 

It was relentless. Peculiar and so different to hurt he had been experiencing in the past; painful but there was absolution in the suffering. 

Grabbing Steve's outstretched palm that was laid in an offer, he nudged him to face him, and Steve like the branches of a tree. Well he went where Bucky directed him, at mercy of his powerful gales, enamored by the care each touch encompassed, reaching for a sun that was eons away. Head falling to the side, he savoured the warmth that concealed his fingers and gazed at Bucky.

“I’m going to patch you up and then this will be nothing but a shitty memory, alright? I need you to hold on for me though, wait for me on the other side.” 

He cracked a wise, bloody grin. “A shitty memory is having to see you fall and fall and fall. But this? This is redemption. A prize. We conquered Troy. We’re going to be okay,” Steve proclaimed, confident now that he obtained nirvana in the palm of his hand.

“Someone’s done their homework,” Bucky murmured, eyes squinting as he began to put Steve back together.

“Had to find something to pass the time.”

He had to find himself to be someone worth knowing. Sure, he was as incomplete as the titanic garnering rust at the bottom of the ocean but by god he had something to be proud of. He wasn’t wasted, he was ruined, and there was something salvageable in him. 

Perhaps, when the sun finally set and the screams echoed into nothing and the lights that shone into their eyes blindly ceased. When the night arrived and with it a cloak of disguise that allowed them to be anything and anyone they wanted to be. He could come clean of all he had been and how he differed from the relic left in the past.

But that would have to come later when they had finally settled and there was a constellation in the sky made of them, a boundless concoction of the most troubled stars that shone ferociously but with reserve. They would make a life for themselves in the universe.

Elation cocooned him at the prospect of the future. Oh, home was here. Home was Bucky Barnes and his messy hair. Home was waking late into the morning, complaining that he missed his run while Bucky pushed him off the bed for being so loud and for what? Exercise he didn’t need? The domesticity of all would sate this insatiable hunger.

“You used to hate learning what they taught us in school,” Bucky commented seemingly absent-minded, “always preferred to do things in your own time and how you wanted to do it. Wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve finally been to space now.”

Shrugging slowly, his chest exposed to the thread and needle stitching his splintered skin, he started, “I don’t know how to tell you this…”

“You have not been to space, shut the fuck up,” Bucky said, nimble fingers pausing in their work to gawk.

He had not. But what would be the fun in telling Bucky that? 

“A man never tells.”

“If you went to fucking space without me Rogers I’m throwing you into the abyss myself,” decided Bucky.

“Did you know the serum allows us to survive in space without a suit or mask?” he lied, feigning genuine astonishment and innocence.

Bucky looked unimpressed.

“Now, you’re just talking out of your ass.”

A cheeky shrug. He couldn’t keep the excitement dormant in his limbs for long. “You believed me though.”

“I did not.”

“Yes you did. I saw it in your eyes, for a split second you thought we could,” he said with a smirk.

Bucky frowned, refusing to meet his gaze. “Shut up, you don’t know what you’re talking about. All this blood loss has made you woozy.”

“Of course, of course. Blame it on the injured man, like I haven’t seen that before,” he remarked, lying even then because, despite all he was, he was a little shit first and foremost.

Before the war when money was scarce and bordem an epidemic in their home, Steve would lie incessantly. Little jokes and tricks meaning no harm, amusing and annoying for Bucky. He thought he grew out of it, he thought that the trauma had subdued whatever was left of the sickly, 90 pounds Steve Rogers.

All it took was some careful loving from Bucky to bring him back. In certain lighting, Steve might have called it pathetic. Natasha would just call him whipped.

“I will literally let you bleed out on this battered sofa,” Bucky declared, hands working fast and craftily.

Steve laughed. “I stopped bleeding an hour ago, it’s a bit too late for that pal. But I’d like to see you try anyway.”

The corner of his lips tugging into a smile, Bucky dropped his head onto Steve’s stomach as lightly as a feather, barely there but sending Steve’s skin scorching. “I don’t know what I’m going to with you.”

Sympathetically, Steve offered him a smile. “You get used to it.”

Picking up his head and laughing under his breath, Bucky said finally, “don’t think I’ll ever get used to you, punk. But that’s always gonna be a good thing. I’m just going to be enthralled by you for the rest of our life.”

“What a long time that is.”

“I guess I am a lucky man after all.”

“As long as you know it.”

“Hey, you didn’t pull no short stick, you're lucky to even know me let alone be in my presence,” Bucky lightly protested.

Smiling and watching him pull Steve back together for hopefully the last time, he replied, “I have my whole life to be grateful for this miracle, don’t you worry about a thing Buck.”


End file.
